Harrison Welsh ’17

---

Few musical groups have proven to be as mysterious and unpredictable as the Australian plunder phonic group The Avalanches. They released their first project, Since I Left You, in 2000 under Modular Records, but soon after disappeared for nearly fifteen years. Their first album received much acclaim from critics and resulted in a fan base, which had to wait passionately for over a decade. Since I Left You was created from nothing but samples from other artists ranging the years from the 40s to there then present time. This style of music had been attempted before but never as impressively as in Since I Left You; it inspired musicians and artists for years to come, mostly influencing the entire genre of hip-hop. Over the fifteen years of hibernation, The Avalanches were not forgotten. In fact, quite the opposite occurred. More and more people continued to discover the group, but as their fan base grew, many thought they had broken up and moved on from music.

On June 2, 2016, the single, “Frankie Sinatra” was released, which featured Danny Brown and MF Doom, two of many of hip hops best artists. Soon after followed the singles Colours and Subways respectively and then the full length, “Wildflower” dropped on July 1^st. The hour-long masterpiece one again contains hundreds of samples from music, movies, radio stations, and many other sources. Together all of these sounds which were not meant to be together, flow perfectly, creating a beautiful virtual world full of features from Toro y Moi, Ariel Pink, Camp Lo, Kevin Parker, as well as the remaining members of The Beatles. This is an album that will be talked about for many years while influencing many different genres of music and art. Music videos for the songs “Because I’m Me,” “Frankie Sinatra,” and “Subways,” were released, which are all very different and very entertaining.